Shadow Play

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

A casual telephone call to Jack Silverman’s office ascertained that he had gone to lunch with a business colleague. A little further probing revealed the lunch was taking place at a certain golf club; Mrs Holdsworth affirmed that it was the name of Charles’s club. ‘So they’re probably together,’ Slider said. ‘Two thirds of the villains in one place. How convenient.’

  Two squad cars were despatched, with four uniformed officers, Atherton in charge and McLaren riding shotgun in case of trouble. Probably they would behave, Slider thought: Holdsworth would not want to make a scene at his club – old habits die hard. And he might still want to play wounded innocence, even though that mule had left the station days ago and was way down the trail. But if there was anything stupider than the criminal, it was the amateur criminal.

  Silverman was an unknown quantity. He might have less to lose in the social acceptability stakes, and not mind starting a rumble; on the other hand, he wouldn’t know how much they knew, so would probably pretend innocence. Slider thought they would both come quietly; but you never knew.

  Meanwhile, SOC could go in, seal off Luxemburg Place – plenty of parking room for once, what a joy – and get to work on Holdsworth’s house. If Kimmelman had been lammed inside, there might just be traces, and a murder weapon. And any paperwork concerning Davy Lane must be confiscated for supporting evidence.

  Kimmelman’s car must be impounded. If the body had been transported in it, again there might be traces. Even if there were not, mud under the wheel arches could be matched to mud in Jacket’s Yard, and the tyres could be matched to the tyre prints taken there. And Slider wouldn’t mind if a small dint were found that matched the bruise on his hip. He didn’t like people trying to kill him. He’d enjoy getting Holdsworth for that.

  Atherton was always amused to note that however fabulous the manicured rolling green acres of the golf course, the club house was usually a bit of a shack. This one was no exception: an oblong box built in the worst period of the seventies out of nasty cheap brick the colour of tinned salmon. As luck would have it, Holdsworth and Silverman were just leaving as they got out of their cars. Holdsworth gave them a blank look, and then one of dithering panic. Silverman looked at Holdsworth, scowling as though it were his fault, and snapped, ‘Now, what the—?’

  Atherton interrupted just in time – there was no way that sentence would end well. ‘Charles Holdsworth and Jack Silverman, I arrest you for the murder of Leon Kimmelman. You do not have to say anything, but—’

  Holdsworth’s face was trembling, his eyes darting about. The four uniformed bods were moving into place, and at the sight of them he flung out a hand towards Silverman and shouted, ‘Not me! He did it! Not me! Him!’

  Silverman threw him a murderous look and, to everyone’s surprise, knocked aside the hand descending on his forearm and took off, across the decorative bit of lawn that faced the clubhouse and away onto the course. Atherton whirled and was after him without thought, sensing rather than seeing two of the uniforms following him, leaving McLaren and the other two with Holdsworth. He heard a splurge of voices behind, but could not pay them attention. Everything in him was concentrated on running.

  Silverman had a good start, and was sprinting with the speed of desperation, but he was older and heavier than Atherton, and a smoker. He would have no staying power. Atherton was gaining on him, and could keep this up for a long time yet. Silverman’s face flashed white as he threw a glance behind, and he put on a spurt.

  He ran between two clumps of trees, onto a fairway, dodged round a bunker, through some rough – that slowed him down more than Atherton – and past more trees. He bounded over a green, to the angry cries of some players. Atherton was close enough now to smell his sweat. It was the traditional moment to shout, ‘Give it up! You can’t get away!’ but Atherton had better use for his breath. They were in the home straight now. Silverman was winded, slogging over the smooth grass by willpower alone, gasping for breath. Atherton grinned, feeling his own body’s reserves, and though there was no need – the blighter would have collapsed soon anyway – he couldn’t resist bringing him down with a flying rugby tackle. Beautiful!

  He got him halfway down the fairway of the 7th hole – par 4, dogleg to the right, tricky bunker in the angle – having just passed a sedate party of golfers, who stared and tutted and muttered among themselves. It’s all very well to play through on invitation, but such boorish behaviour brought a club a bad name.

  The uniforms came pounding up in time to supply a set of handcuffs – justified now Silverman had run – and Atherton removed his knee from his back and said, ‘As I was saying, I arrest you for the murder of Leon Kimmelman.’

  There was a little oohing from the golfers. That’d give them something to talk about at the bar.

  Meanwhile, squad cars had been despatched to Myra Silverman’s office near Tower Bridge and the Silvermans’ house in Chiswick to scoop up the missing third element of the conspiracy. She was not at her office. The second team found her at home, looking uncharacteristically ruffled, while assiduously burning paperwork on a barbecue in the garden.

  ‘Of course, we don’t know how far she was complicit in the murder,’ Slider said to Atherton.

  ‘The papers she was trying to burn were Davy Lane stuff,’ he said, ‘so she was certainly in on that. Well, we know she was – she was the one who badgered Rathkeale about it. So that’s conspiracy to defraud public money.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Slider said slowly. ‘She could argue she was just lobbying for a legitimate project.’

  ‘She must be worried if she was burning the papers. And there’s conspiracy to blackmail,’ Atherton said.

  ‘We don’t know if she was in on that.’

  ‘I bet she was.’

  ‘So do I, but can we prove it? Kimmelman was Holdsworth’s dog – and, by the way, we still don’t know why he was killed.’

  Atherton grinned. ‘The way Charlie ratted Silverman out, I think we won’t have any trouble finding out. They’ll both be longing to talk to us. I wonder what he ran for – silly ass! You expect that from the Rudys of this world, maybe, not fully-fledged businessmen.’

  ‘You enjoyed it,’ Slider observed.

  ‘It made a change. Still can’t understand it, though. I suppose he just panicked.’

  ‘Last chance to stretch his legs, perhaps,’ said Slider.

  ‘He’ll have a stretch of another sort coming up. Are we tacking on attempted murder of a police officer?’

  ‘We might use that as a bargaining chip,’ Slider said, ‘when we see how amenable they are.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘Meanwhile, we can now apply for all the bank accounts and telephone records, and start making out a watertight timeline. And put someone onto tracing the SUV from Luxemburg Place to Nigel Playfair Avenue. With a bit of luck, we’ll get a shot of who was driving, and then it’s game over.

  The proper processes had been followed – fingerprints and DNA sample, medical examination and permitted phone call, and all three suspects had elected to have a lawyer sent for. Myra Silverman’s was a hotshot human rights solicitor, a good-looking woman famed on TV for her almost knee-length mane of smooth black hair and her savage attacks on the government. Slider thought she was bad news, but Atherton said she was probably not well up on criminal law, and might not have been Myra’s best pick, though they’d look good side by side on camera when she was released on bail, which was probably the point. Slider told him not to be cynical.

  Jack Silverman’s was a local man, and Holdsworth’s was a woman, Angela Wilton, who exuded repressed anger as she stalked past them into the room.

  ‘Why did she look at you like that?’ Slider murmured to Atherton.

  He shrugged. ‘I went out with her once.’ He thought a moment. ‘Well, several times.’

  ‘Oh joy. So you dumped her?’

  ‘Au contraire, boss. I was the dumpee. She wanted to be the only one, and didn’t like it when she found she wasn’t.’

  ‘You and your pr
ivate life. We should have your trousers sewn up,’ Slider said.

  ‘Hey, I never promised her a rose garden. That’s the trouble with women of her age – they’ve written their own script before you’ve even told them your name.’

  ‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,’ said Slider. ‘Is she going to cause us trouble?’

  ‘Nah. She’ll be professional.’

  ‘I love your optimism.’

  Holdsworth was, as predicted, eager to talk. Angela Wilton’s nostrils were getting quite a work-out, but she had to take her client’s instructions, which were that he wanted to talk. He was sweating, and his eyes were flitting, and before they’d even got the tape running he’d blurted out, ‘It wasn’t me! Jack did it!’

  Wilton sighed lustily. She leaned in to him and hissed, ‘Don’t say anything until you’re asked.’

  When they had set up, Slider said kindly to Holdsworth, ‘Let’s just take things in order, from the beginning, shall we? We know what you’ve done, we’ve logged it all every step of the way. All we want from you really is to know why.’

  ‘But I haven’t done anything,’ Holdsworth pleaded.

  ‘Let’s start with Davy Lane,’ Slider began.

  ‘That’s just business,’ Holdsworth interrupted. ‘Legitimate business. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘A youth centre with some luxury flats tacked on the top. Or rather, some lucrative flats with a youth centre tacked on underneath so you could get the whole thing paid for with government money.’

  ‘Don’t answer that,’ said Angela Wilton.

  Holdsworth ignored her. ‘That was Myra’s idea. The whole thing was Myra’s idea.’ He seemed unable to pass up an opportunity to blame someone else. He looked sulky now. ‘She’s always getting me into trouble. She made me buy Lloyds shares just before the crash. She thinks she’s so smart, the great businesswoman, but she’s not so clever when you get down to it. Look at the mess she’s got us into now!’

  Wilton’s nostrils were flaring so much she was in danger of taking off.

  In her more leisurely, not to say rambling, interview with Mrs Holdsworth, Swilley had obtained a lot of background detail, which was now comfortably under Slider’s belt. Since her home was still being examined and she said she had no friends or relatives, Mrs Holdsworth had now been settled in a small hotel they sometimes used, where the proprietress was well versed in keeping an eye on her visitors and making sure they didn’t either run or top themselves.

  To Swilley Mrs Holdsworth had confessed, ‘I never liked Myra much. She was too hard. I don’t like to see a woman like that. Women ought to be womanly. But they couldn’t have children, you know, her and Jack. Charles says it’s Jack’s fault. I don’t know. I don’t think she ever wanted them. Charles says she never played with dolls when she was a child. There was just the two of them, you know. Charles is the elder, but she was always the one in charge. She was a tomboy – climbing trees, trespassing, breaking windows. She was always leading him into trouble, but then he’d be the one to be punished. “You’re older than she is,” his father would say, “you should take care of your sister.” And he’d get beaten, and she’d just laugh. But he never had – I don’t know – the will to refuse her. She’d say, let’s do this, and he just went along with it. Always.’

  ‘But you said he liked to dominate,’ Swilley had mentioned.

  ‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘Everyone but Myra. I suppose that’s why,’ she added, as if it were a new insight. ‘He could never win with her, so he has to beat everyone else.’ And then she looked up, alarmed. ‘He’s not a bad man, you mustn’t think that. I’m not saying he’s a bad man.’

  ‘I know what you’re saying,’ Swilley said soothingly.

  She was getting a very nice clear picture, of the sulky, resentful little boy, bullied by his sister, who grew up to bully everyone else in compensation.

  And the son who was thrashed by his father often grew up to be the father who thrashed his son. Corporal punishment was like an hereditary flaw, that got passed down the generations.

  ‘Yes,’ said Slider, ‘Myra was so sure she could get Kevin Rathkeale to back the project, wasn’t she?’

  ‘She got that wrong as well. Still, she ought to know him, if anyone does,’ Holdsworth said nastily.

  ‘They’d worked together before, on other projects,’ Slider said.

  ‘And she had an affair with him.’

  Ah, thought Slider. ‘He doesn’t seem a very … well, attractive person,’ he said.

  Holdsworth sniffed. ‘Myra doesn’t care about that. Power’s all she’s interested in. She sleeps with men to get power over them.’

  Wilton murmured something to him.

  ‘It’s not speculation,’ he said, sounding surprised. ‘She talks about it openly. She’s proud of it. I don’t know how proud she was when she found out about his other proclivities. The rent boys and all that.’ He sniggered.

  ‘But his proclivities proved to be useful, didn’t they? They allowed you to blackmail him.’

  ‘Don’t answer that,’ said Wilton, and then, to Slider, ‘You are not to go on fishing expeditions. As I understand it, there was no attempt made to extort money or favours from Mr Rathkeale.’

  ‘No,’ said Holdsworth. ‘We never got that far. It would have worked – Myra was sure about that. Kevin couldn’t afford a scandal. But bloody Leon went and—’ He stopped abruptly, perhaps with a belated access of caution.

  ‘He did a good job on your boat, setting up the camera and getting that compromising film,’ Slider said.

  ‘I’m saying nothing,’ Holdsworth said, giving Wilton a smug smile. She rolled her eyes slightly.

  ‘You don’t need to,’ said Slider. ‘It was your boat. Leon was your employee. He picked up the boys and took them back in his company car, provided by you.’

  ‘You have no evidence that my client knew anything about that,’ Wilton said.

  Slider ignored her and asked Holdsworth, ‘Just out of interest, why did you say you didn’t know him when my colleague first came to see you?’

  Holdsworth looked flustered. ‘Well, it wasn’t a very good photograph.’

  ‘He told you his name was Leon Kimmelman. You said you’d never heard of him.’

  ‘I was … I didn’t … I’m not used to the police turning up on my doorstep.’

  ‘You were frightened,’ Slider offered.

  ‘Yes,’ he took it gratefully. Then, with a glance at Wilton: ‘No. I had nothing to be frightened about. I didn’t like that policeman asking me questions. I didn’t think it was any of his business.’

  ‘It’s police business when a man has been killed.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know that. I thought Leon had just gone missing.’

  Wilton was too professional to put her head in her hands, but Slider thought a faint moan escaped from her.

  ‘You hadn’t reported him missing to the police.’

  ‘Why should I? He was a grown man.’

  ‘But you told your wife you had.’

  ‘Oh, she’s a blundering fool. Muddle headed. You can’t take anything she says as true. Anyway, I didn’t want her …’ He stopped again, his eyes shifting guiltily.

  ‘You didn’t want her looking in the garage, where Leon’s car was hidden.’

  ‘You don’t have to answer that,’ said Wilton.

  ‘You don’t need to,’ Slider said sympathetically. ‘I’m afraid it’s pretty damning evidence. Leon drove to your house in that car and was never seen again. And there’s the car in your garage – the same car that was used to dump his body in Jacket’s Yard – and also, as it happens, the same car that was used to try to run me down.’

  ‘That wasn’t me! That was Jack!’ Holdsworth cried.

  ‘I told you not to say anything,’ Wilton said desperately. ‘That wasn’t even a question.’

  ‘But I’m not having that pinned on me,’ Holdsworth said indignantly. ‘I told Jack some policewoman had com
e round asking questions and he just went crazy. He was the one tried to kill you, not me. And he was the one who killed Leon. It’s that temper of his. I told him we should pay him off, but he just lost it.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened that night?’ Slider said.

  ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Wilton snapped. ‘He’s trying to get you to incriminate yourself.’

  ‘But I want to tell him,’ said Holdsworth. ‘It doesn’t incriminate me – it gets me off.’

  ‘If you insist on ignoring my advice …’

  ‘No, it’ll be all right,’ Holdsworth said eagerly. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘One thing about Charles,’ Mrs Holdsworth said sadly, ‘is that he can’t bear to admit he’s wrong. It’s absurd, really. We used to have a cleaner – Isobel was her name. Such a nice lady – Portuguese, but spoke very good English. Well, Charles broke this cut-glass decanter – he dropped it on the glass top of the coffee table one evening, and cracked that as well. And he said Isobel must have done it. I know it was him, because I found the bits of glass hidden in the bottom of the bin in the morning, before she even arrived. But he confronted her and said she’d done it and he was going to dock it from her pay. Of course she protested, and he got very nasty with her, and she walked out. So now I do the cleaning myself,’ she concluded sadly. ‘It wasn’t the first time he’d blamed her for things, you see. A watermark on the dining-room table. A chip out of the door frame. A person can only stand it for so long.’

  ‘But you didn’t stand up for Isobel, over the decanter?’

  She gave Swilley a look, ashamed and afraid. ‘I couldn’t,’ she said, and left it at that.

  ‘He came over to supper on the Saturday,’ Holdsworth said. ‘It was supposed to be a sort of victory celebration. Of course, we couldn’t talk about it in front of Avril. She’s such a blundering fool, you can’t trust her not to blurt everything out to the wrong person. But we had a few words after supper while she was out in the kitchen making the coffee. Leon said the film had come out perfectly and that he’d edit it the next day and make a copy for us. And he asked how much he was going to get paid for it. I said he’d be paid for his time, the same as he always was. And he said this was different, and he thought he ought to be cut in for a share of the profits. I was going to tell him to go to hell, but Myra jumped in and said that sounded reasonable, and we’d talk about it and let him know. And she gave me a look that meant “shut up”. So I did. But after Leon had left, she said she didn’t like the sound of it, that he was getting uppity, and we’d have to think what to do with him.’